1. Field of Invention
The invention pertains to an apparatus and method for providing real time communication over a data network.
2. Description of Related Art
With the ever increasing benefits of computerization to every day life, more people are logging-on to the Internet to obtain information and to communicate with other people around the world. This communication typically takes the form of textual messages sent either by electronic mail, text messages sent to other users currently logged-on to designated "chat rooms" or sent through Internet messaging. These text messages must be manually input via a computer keyboard and sent to the other users as blocks of text. This causes a great delay in the transmission and reception of messages since the speed at which communication takes place is dependent on the users' typing ability.
Recently, voice telephony systems have been devised which use voice codes (coder/decoders) to achieve actual voice communication over data networks. These systems take voice input signals, digitize these signals, and encode them for transmission as digital data. This data is transmitted to a receiving station where the coded data is decoded and output to the receiving party. These systems are straddled with significant sound degradation (delays and distortions) due to the asynchronous nature of the data network and the continuous streaming of the data packets necessary for the transmission of actual voice data. The timing of the data packets used in such voice telephony systems requires large bandwidth and cannot tolerate undesirable delays. Therefore, the use of standard modem lines having small bandwidths in voice telephony systems results in degradation of the reconstructed sound.
Furthermore, these voice telephony systems do not allow for anonymity of the parties since the party's actual voice is transmitted. Such anonymity is generally valued by users of the Internet because it provides a sense of privacy and security. In addition, automatic documentation of conversations are not possible and the voice telephony is limited to the particular languages spoken by the parties. Thus, new technology is needed to achieve acceptable voice communication over data networks.